TERROR IN TEHRAN

You know how it is: you go away for a short holiday and the world order breaks down. First of all, tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan escalated into military conflict, keeping me glued briefly to the television screen in our hotel room. Then the United States and Israel began new military operations against Iran, with the latest conflict spreading across the Middle East like ink on blotting paper. Iran has struck targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Israel, meanwhile, started hitting targets in Lebanon.

As I skim through press commentaries and social media reactions, I see how people's opinions converge and diverge from one war to the next, shuffle and realign like the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope. There were those who shared a viewpoint on Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, who then separated and converged in a different pattern when it came to the war between Israel and Hamas, and now another pattern emerges as people agree or disagree on the basis for US-Israeli military attacks on Iran.

Those attacks hardly come as a surprise. Contrary to common opinion, US president Donald Trump is in some respects quite predictable. When he amassed an armada off the cost of Venezuela, it signalled an imminent military operation. As a US naval force deployed to the Middle East, it was always likely to be used against Iran; the Iranians, fully aware of this, stepped up efforts to fortify nuclear and military sites in February. The idea that Iran might make concessions in the face of US pressure always seemed naive.

Justifications, motivations and goals

The first thing to say about the US intervention, Operation Epic Fury, is the lack of clarity about the political goals. Trump had invoked regime change early on. As hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in January, Trump wrote on social media: 'Keep protesting – Take over your institutions! – Help is on its way'. The brutality of the Iranian regime was on display, with the Supreme Leader acknowledging that 'several thousand' protesters had been killed in the crackdown by authorities. On 13 February, two weeks before the first strikes, the US president said that regime change is 'the best thing that could happen' in Iran.

Other senior US figures, however, have in recent days given different explanations for the intervention and its goals. Vice-president JD Vance emphasised that it was about ending Iran's nuclear ambitions; a claim also implicit in recent comments from US envoy Steve Witkoff, and repeated today (4 March) by the White House press secretary. The US secretary of state Marco Rubio, on the other hand, stated that it was preemptive action owing to Israel's plans to strike Iran – in effect saying that Israel was the tail that wagged the dog: 'We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action... that would precipitate a [retaliatory] attack against American forces.' Ergo: the US was, according to Rubio, acting in self-defence against an imminent attack.

"I don't see Iran being involved in the nuclear business anymore... [US strikes have] set the programme back, basically decades... It's gone for years." – Donald Trump, 25 June 2025

The nuclear threat is emerging as the key note, though. It is also problematic. When Israel and the US carried out attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities last summer, the White House claimed to have set back Iran's nuclear programme by one to two years. On 21 February, Witkoff claimed that Iran was 'probably a week away' from having the materials to make a nuclear bomb. The statements do not square with each other. Both claims cannot be true; both can, however, be untrue.

A certain amount is clearly US propaganda. After the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities last year, I noted that authoritative voices were raising questions about what the attacks had achieved. Evidence suggested that Trump's claim of having 'completely obliterated' Iran's nuclear programme was an exaggeration. The evidence included there being no increase in radiation levels, satellite imagery indicating some nuclear materials had been moved prior to the attacks, and a US intelligence report, leaked to media, that provisionally concluded that centrifuges at the Fordow enrichment site had not been destroyed.

"If we didn't hit within two weeks, they would have had a nuclear weapon" – Donald Trump, 4 March 2026

Trump's administration was having none of it. A boastful Vance told media that Operation Midnight Hammer, the strikes against Iran last summer, was exemplary of 'the Trump doctrine'. This, he explained, entailed a clearly-defined interest, aggressive diplomacy to attain it, and military action if diplomacy failed. On the last point, his exact phrasing was: 'you use overwhelming military power... and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.'

Planning and design

At first glance, Operation Epic Fury (and the parallel Israeli operation, codenamed Roaring Lion) looks to have secured significant achievements. The joint operation has assassinated Iran's Supreme Leader, along with other senior figures, and a great many military targets have been taken out. The US's military objectives, unlike its political goals, look well-defined and are being pursued with vigour.

But a surgical operation, of the kind that extracted Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela in January, is hard to imagine in the context of one-hundred-million-strong Iran. The regime in Tehran has had plenty of time to prepare and cultivate the loyalty of its military and security forces; the death of the Supreme Leader alone cannot be expected to overturn the regime's preparations; it is a regime, not an individual, running the country. Its armed forces comprise more than 600,000 active personnel; its Revolutionary Guard more than 100,000.

The crucial question, as I see it, is therefore whether any senior military commanders defect from the regime. This is particularly relevant as Iran prepares to announce its new Supreme Leader; how will the senior military officers who command the loyalty of subordinates react? Will they accept the new ruler? What if the commander of the armed forces goes rogue on the regime? Or the commander of a key unit? Iran's political system is designed with 'coup-proofing' in mind, but some risk of rupture is always there.

If the political and military elite fractures, then the opposition will have an opportunity to take power if it is sufficiently organised and supported. There are a wide range of oppositional groups, both inside and outside the country, and it is not obvious that the US knows which ones to work with; it has been rumoured the US is considering arming Iranian Kurds (which might not sit well with NATO ally Turkey, which has a complicated relationship with the Kurds). Since I am not an expert on Iran, I shall not elaborate on the Iranian opposition here.

The US and Israel may have overwhelming military superiority, but they still have to capitalise on that to their political advantage. Otherwise the implication is that the fallout could be far from neat and the possibility of not getting the hell out and it becoming a protracted conflict is real.

Luck always plays a role. However well-planned the US military operation in Venezuela might have been, it still relied on some luck to pull it off. Ultimately, the US has only kept a lid on the situation in that country by not pushing for regime change, instead allowing Maduro's vice-president to take over. Trump's luck will run out somewhere; perhaps in Iran if he does push for regime change. Some, including the UK government, have said openly that they do not think the US has a clear plan beyond its initial strikes; Starmer told the Commons that he sees no 'viable, thought-through plan' for Iran. I agree. Listening to Trump's jumble of rhetoric, it does not sound like he knows what he is doing.

An illegal war: Who will join the posse?

Many European governments have stated bluntly that the joint US-Israeli actions lack a basis in international law. This is surely right. The UN Charter permits war with UN Security Council authorisation, which the US and Israel did not seek, or in cases of self-defence (Article 51).

Any other US president, less bumptious than Trump, would have quickly invoked self-defence in earnest. Trump did claim that Iran was building missiles that 'could soon reach the American homeland', implying a preventive motivation, but from his lips it sounded like an afterthought. In any case, it was undermined by suggestions that US intelligence community disagreed with the claim, with one assessment indicating a belief Iran could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 at the earliest.

In terms of authorisation, it is true that there could be no UN Security Council authorisation because Russia and China would undoubtedly veto it. But the current US president is too short-sighted to recognise the added legitimacy or support that merely arguing his case in the Security Council could bestow. In 2003, George W. Bush's administration at least tried to persuade the UN his planned invasion of Iraq was justified. It seems, in contrast, that Trump's administration simply sees the UN as a constraint on US power; it is unable to see that the US may not always be in a position of preponderant power, that it might one day welcome strong institutions to regulate the global order.

There is also broader US ambivalence about international law (see my two-part blog here), which it views as sometimes flexible enough to bend to its own ends and sometimes an inconvenience. Perhaps the key point is that, in so far as the US sees law as having any role, it is as something that can be changed retrospectively. In the wake of the Iraq war, law professor Michael Glennon observed: 'Americans prefer after-the-fact, corrective laws... [whereas Europeans] prefer preventive rules aimed at averting crises... before they take place.'

Vance said, 'You use overwhelming military power... and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict'

Yet the US decision to begin a new military intervention, however predictable it may have been, has heightened frictions with NATO allies. Trump has hit out at the Spanish and the British, in particular. Spain refused a US request to use jointly operated military facilities on its territory, prompting the US president to threaten to cut trade ties. Meanwhile the British prime minister's background as an international human rights lawyer has translated into an inflexible commitment to international law (even, at times, arguably, mistakenly interpreting it – vide: the Chagos farrago). The consequence here has been a messy policy: first denying the US access to UK bases for its attack on Iran, now allowing it to use them in limited circumstances.

More concerning, perhaps, will be how the US military intervention is viewed by adversaries such as Russia. Unsurprisingly Russia swiftly condemned the 'reckless' air strikes against Iran. But the Kremlin will also look closely at the targets Israel and US claim to be 'legitimate', such as government buildings, because the Kremlin will refer back to those as it targets similar facilities in Ukraine – as it surely will. The world is always in flux, what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable subject to change, and Russia will relish using the US as a justification for its own activities, even if it is unprepared to offer Iran direct military support (though I did argue in the past that deepening military cooperation between Russia and Iran was a serious concern.)

Indeed, on the one side, the current war is demonstrating that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – the so-called CRINKs – are far away from constituting a military alliance, a point I have made before. On the other, as Turkey reports NATO intercepting an Iranian missile, the war could yet test unity within the North Atlantic alliance, too.

4 March